1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic devices and systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to mediating user inputs to interactive electronic devices and systems.
2. Background Art
Interactive media relies heavily on being able to immerse a customer or user in a particular environment for extended periods of time. In particular, interactive applications for personal computers and game consoles typically incorporate some kind of device that allows a user to use mechanical motion of part or all of their body to create a desired response in the interactive application being executed by the computer or console. That desired response is typically provided as visual feedback to the user through use of a display, such as a television. By successfully tying the desired response and the visual feedback to the mechanical motion of the users body, the application attempts to provide a reasonably immersive interactive experience.
Unfortunately, that visual feedback is often disjoint from the mechanical motion used to create the associated desired response, resulting in either an unintended response in the interactive application, or in an exceedingly frustrating and non-immersive interactive experience for the user.
For example, many contemporary devices used to detect mechanical motion of a user are connected to consoles wirelessly, but their utility is foreshortened due to poor battery life, which can abruptly and frustratingly interrupt an interactive experience. Even if a device used to detect motion is powered directly from a console, however, many such devices detect motion inaccurately, or are difficult to manipulate accurately or seamlessly with natural motion of a user.
Moreover, compounding the unsatisfactory interactive experience is a tendency of contemporary displays to incorporate long video latencies associated with noise reduction and other video quality-enhancing computational features. While such video quality features typically do not negatively affect normal television viewing, where audio and video can be synchronized regardless of any arbitrary delay between the television being presented with video data and the video data being displayed, the video latencies associated with such features can add 200 milliseconds or more to an overall response latency, which can significantly reduce responsiveness and realism of an interactive media experience, particularly where hand-eye coordination is required.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing an enhanced motion detection methodology that provides increased accuracy and a more realistic feedback experience while reducing power usage requirements.